Roscosmos CEO: Russia has absolute sovereignty in satellite navigation

MOSCOW. June 3 (Interfax) - The Glonass satellite system allows Russia to have sovereignty in the area of navigation, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov.

"It's important that we have absolute sovereignty in a number of areas. Navigation - the Glonass system. We, the United States and China, which have fully deployed navigation constellations," Bakanov said at the 20 Years of Achievements: Technology, Science and People session on Wednesday.

He noted that sovereign access to space must be mandatory in the modern world.

"The next area is orbital stations and manned cosmonautics. Sooner or later we will be moving closer to deep space regardless, and that means developing medical technologies, training the body, and preparing infrastructure where the body can exist. And without manned cosmonautics, we would have lost this momentum," he said.

Bakanov also said that return stage technology has made it possible to monopolize the launch services market for 10-12 years. "Although it would seem that until 2012, the Russian Federation had a monopoly on the market, with Proton and Soyuz rockets holding 70%-80% of the launch services market," he said.

"Here, we need to respond: the Soyuz-5 has good performance for launching approximately 18 tonnes into low orbit, which also allows us to compete economically in this area," Bakanov said.

The Glonass system is being deployed simultaneously with the development of the European Galileo global navigation system, the American GPS, and the Chinese Beidou system.

The Glonass system, originally designed for military purposes, was launched simultaneously with the missile attack warning system in 1982 to provide operational navigation and timing support to an unlimited number of users based on land, sea, air, and space. Roscosmos, JSC Reshetnev, and JSC Russian Space Systems are developing the Glonass project.